Since 1984, Bob McGinn has covered the Green Bay Packers. First for the Green Bay Press-Gazette, then for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

I’ve been reading Bob’s work regularly since the Internet first gave me access to the Journal-Sentinel. His articles and columns are among the very best sportswriting you’ll ever read. Heck, they’re among the very best writing, period. His day-after-the-game stories are always the best, his in-depth game analyses later in the week are uniformly outstanding, and his NFL draft coverage is without equal.

Yesterday, the Journal-Sentinel announced that Bob’s retiring.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. Although we’ve never met, Bob’s like a member of the family. Dad and I had too many conversations to remember which began with something Bob wrote about the Packers. He was diligent, fair, tough, and knowledgeable. He was exactly what you want in a sportswriter.

To quote from the Journal-Sentinelarticle about his retirement, “In 2011, he was selected by the Pro Football Writers of America as recipient of the prestigious Dick McCann Award for long and distinguished reporting, placing him in the writers’ wing of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. In Wisconsin, he is a six-time winner of the Sportswriter of the Year award from the National Sports Media Association.”

In January, Sports Illustrated featured an in-depth profile of Bob, written by Greg Bishop. Reading that piece is a great way to understand why Bob was so revered by fans, players, and writers alike.

To Bob and his wife Ann, I offer my best wishes. Thank you for all of your work covering the Green Bay Packers, and thank you for your dedication to a job well done.

We have a lot more great crime fiction lined up this season, including stories by Lawrence Block, James Grady, Lyndsay Faye, and many more! I’m completely pumped about season 4 and I hope you enjoy it, too. (Our longtime partner in crime, Scott Detrow — though busy with his gig at NPR — still plans to contribute a few stories this season.)

Years ago… well, decades ago, I was a reporter for the Lebanon (PA) Daily News. I covered the courthouse and politics and whatever else I was assigned. (My boss, editor Paul Baker, once had to remind me — strongly remind me — that my job included covering stories that were somewhat less interesting than a murder trial. He was, needless to say, correct.)

I talked to Les Stewart — a reporter straight out of Central Casting, and a reporter who taught me a lot during my time there — about my short story collection THE THROES OF CRIME, the Lebanon County roots of the story “The Murder of Ernest Trapnell,” playing board games, and much more.